We're not in Kansas Anymore, Toto.

Friday wine goodness: Let them drink Cakebread.

So, first off, the Newman's Own hasn't actually been broken into.  Apparently last weekend I was in a Shiraz-blend mood, and stuck to the Penfolds.  Second, since my posting this week has been pretty lame, I will offer that the shock collar training with one very mischievous poodle has gone about 50/50 on the good/bad side, so far.  I'm a little afraid he may need a pacemaker after this, but we keep trying.  Look for Max at a John Kerry rally near you. 

Anyhoodles, I came here today to write about wine, didn't I?  Right, well, I'll get to that in a minute. 

So, quick back story, next week my husband starts a new Yob.  This is good news, and bad news.  The good is he is very excited to be returning to the wireless telecom/technology sector, where he can geek out to his little heart's content.  The bad is that this new company starts its day at 8am, and is a 20-25 minute commute, so the morning routine of our entire household (ie: my lazy-ass routine of sleeping until 7am and getting up when he brings me coffee) will be turned on its ear. (pout pout pout. whine whine whine. Wait, what's that? A bigger paycheck? Paid benefits? Shutting up now.)

(God I take a long time to make a point, don't I?)

Right so, my husband finished his notice earlier in the week and has been biding his time being a househusband, getting some things done that desperately needed doing while he had a chance.  When I got home from a worthless hour of time I'll never get back at the Sprint Store, he said, "My last night of (brief) unemployment!  Let's open the Cakebread!"

A couple of years ago, he read a recommendation for Cakebread wines, and we took one to a dinner party of a friend who is quite the wine connoisseur, and it played well.  Since, we've saved a bottle for ourselves to celebrate with.  It's a nice chardonnay, Cakebread, and not cheap.  If you can find it for around $30 you're doing pretty well, but I've seen it for $60 and even behind glass doors for certain years.  Since I think I've mentioned before my threshold for wine prices, the Newman's Own of last week falling above my normal range at $14.99 a bottle, the Cakebread seems a huge extravagance.  But, hey, I'm all for celebrating, so once again I skipped yoga last night in favor of wine and a nice dinner with my family.

It was pretty good, I must admit.  But I guess just not as good as I imagined it being given how expensive it was.  It doesn't beat my all time favorite chard, La Crema, that's for sure.  I also think for the splurgy-price,  the Shafer is much better.

And what did we pair with our fahncy wine?  Are you ready for this?

Ham steaks and white rice.  When my husband told me that was the menu to accompany our celebratory wine, I asked if maybe we should also drink it out of jelly jars?  He didn't find it that amusing.  But I sure did.

Like shaking a can of Coke.

So last night we scrambled to get dinner on early since we thought Will was going to have his Very! First! T-Ball! Practice!  Except I'm not allowed to call it T-Ball, it's BASEBALL, Mommy, T-Ball is for babies.  Disregard the T-Ball stand in front of the catcher's mound, woman, it does not apply here.  Right.

Anyway, T-Ball got canceled due to the spitting on/off rain we were getting, as if a little wet grass and mud would really make it a miserable affair, but whatever.  This meant, since we had already finished dinner, that we had a full two hours until bedtime.  So daddy took the kids outside to play basketball on the neighbors driveway, which was a little strange for all our neighbors because it happens to be the house we used to live in  and should have just rented out instead of selling when we moved to California four years ago, but I digress.  So they played basketball on our old driveway for a while, then a nice little rainstorm came down and everyone scampered, wet, back into my kitchen.  Which I had just cleaned.

This is when my husband decided ice cream would be a good idea.  It was now 20 minutes to bedtime.
And what do you do with two little boys who've just eaten a bowl of ice cream right before bedtime?  Why, yes, of course, you crank up the Beastie Boys and play air Guitar Hero and do some hip hop breakdancing, and close your eyes and cross your fingers that nobody goes through the glass top coffee table.  Yes, that's exactly what I would do.

 

Friday wine goodness: The genius of Paul Newman.

Paul Newman can do anything.  His Newman's Own brand has evolved from a little organic charity wunderkind to a multinational brand where the charity part isn't even understood by most folks who buy it, they just love the products.  And now, he's entered the wine category.  It ain't as cheap as Two Buck Chuck, but I'll bet it's tasty.  And I aim to find out in a mere few hours as I finish setting up for tomorrow's junk offload garage sale.  Stay tuned.

PS: Kiss your bolting days goodbye, Max baby.  The collar has arrived. 

I wanna be a free range mom.

So I saw this article the other day, about the anti-helicopter parenting of New York freelance writer Lenore Skenazy as she allowed her nine year old to ride the subway home from Bloomingdales, alone, and got an uproar of both supporters and haters.  So she started freerangekids, a new blog which promotes the idea that our children will not probably die if not wrapped in bubble wrap and constantly watched like a hawk.  I...I like this idea.  I like it a lot.  I am one of just a few mommies in my neighborhood that allows my kids play outside without being out there with them.  They have a pretty wide swath of freedom, within 10-12 houses in either direction mind you, and they know to call if they go inside someone else's house to play, they know to let me know where they will be.  Sometimes they forget, and pay a consequence.  They learn from it.

I live in the suburbs.  In Kansas.  No, its not Mayberry, but it ain't Gary, Indiana either.  It's green lawns and big, fenced yards and lots of Keeping up With the Jones, with a little splash of Desperate Housewives.  It's pretty safe.  Yet there are children who live within direct line-of-sight of my yard who are not allowed to come play in my backyard, even while a parent is outside doing something like lawnmowing or washing the car, because then that parent doesn't have an eye trained directly on that child.  This, I do not understand.

I was a latchkey kid in the 80's.  I went to after school care when younger, but by the time I was in 4th grade, I had my own key to the house on the same chain as my bike lock key.  I was responsible for my 1st grader brother, and I came home every day after school and watched TV and beat him up and ate white chocolate baking squares for snack out of the pantry.  My brother and I called my mom at work half a dozen times every afternoon to tattle on the other one (the rule was we could not leave the house, she could call us at ANY TIME and if we didn't answer our butts were toast.  This was before caller id and even answering machines, at least at my house.)  It may not have been the arrangement my mother preferred, but it was the arrangement that fit in her pocketbook at the time, and we all survived. 

When my kids were younger, yes, I watched them outside more carefully, I wanted to be there in case they fell off a bike, or to make sure they weren't riding out into the street in front of a zooming teenager in a giant SUV.  But also, I wanted to be out there because I didn't want to be the mommy letting all the other mommies watch my kids, since they were all out there being paranoid anyway.  Although, the mommy  camaraderie, and for a few blissful minutes of not doing anything else but standing around, was fun in a busy world.  But now, I have shit to do, people.  My kids, 5 and 7, are quite capable of taking care of themselves outside.   

This despite that sometimes one of them comes running into the house to tattle on some behavior I would have interfered with had I been out there.  Or for that matter, someone comes in bleeding and crying.  That's called, Oh I don't know, BEING KIDS.  It's why we have Bactine and Band-Aids and kisses for making it all better, and tissues to wipe away the tears.  And we then give them a cookie and send their asses back outside.

And yes, sometimes I come out of my front door screaming because I walk by a window and see them doing something I don't like, for instance, shooting a nerf gun too close to someone's face or sitting on the top of the playset roof, or trying to reach down in the sewer out by the curb with a long stick.  I'm sure my neighbors think, "Well, if she were out here watching she would have noticed that before it became a problem!" 

Look, I do have helicopter parent tendencies.  I am right now questioning my judgement in allowing my oldest to go to a laser tag birthday party coming up soon.  I don't like them playing with guns, at all, but I have forced myself to chill out on that as they've gotten a little older and can understand rules about shooting near the face, etc.  They are boys, and I have to let them play boy games and not suppress the natural tendencies.  I am the first one to react when I hear that something has happened at school, either with a teacher or another student.  And I have always been rather hyper about self-esteem and ADHD issues that may affect my kids negatively, as I don't want them to go through what happened to me as a kid in school along those lines. 

But in the end, I think I'm a pretty easy going parent.  I want my kids to know that I'll always be there for them when they need me, but they have to learn their own way.  I don't want them to go off to college and think they can do what they want, I'll always rescue them.  I want them to have the right decision making skills, and kids don't get that by being told what to think or do, they get it by learning it the hard way.  By being allowed to get into those tough spots and making a choice, right or wrong. 

Would I let my nine year old take public transportation, alone?  Can't say.  But I don't live where that's even an option.  If I had grown up in NYC, knew the city and subway lines and how it worked, I would probably be more comfortable. 

Friday wine goodness: Heart Healthy Linky Love.

So, we've all heard the reports that red wine is good for your heart.  There are many (try google, or digg).  But this one is the best I've ever seen:

Drinking wine can maintain heart health, prevent cancer and even settle a mean case of diarrhea. Research now shows it’s also good for your teeth and throat.

Sore throats! Gingivitis! (Er, nevermind the teeth staining part, that's why they invented Crest Whitestrips, yes?) And lo, diarrhea!  I KNEW there was a reason I love wine.  Maybe that will offset all those FiberOne bars I've been eating to try and lose weight.  Thanks to Bob Green and Oprah, who knew their world domination plan included keeping people in the bathroom all damn day.  Ahem. 

Anyway, other things are good for the heart, too, of course.  This is the part where I shamelessly plug my kid's fundraising efforts, Jump Rope for the Heart, sponsored by the American Heart Association.  If you're bored and feel like donating to his little online fundraising page, be my guest.  The online donation has a minimum of $25 though (greedy bastards) so if you want to do something but not that much, email me and I'll do it manually.

Also, speaking of links, you may have noticed a new little bauble up in my left sidebar, Feel Your Boobies!  (Yes you can say that on TV, as Heather says)  A breast cancer awareness site.  A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, and this site is awesome.  I've long been a supporter of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, but hey, the more awareness we can get for this disease, the better.  Click away.  Feel free to drink and click, in fact!

(Could I get more links in this post?)

Its going to be rainy and stormy all weekend here, so it looks like no soccer or planting bushes for me .  I guess I'll have to stay in and drink wine and let Wii parent for me.

(Anybody love that Wii song as much as me? Lordy.)

(Although this one is hilarious!  Wii goes all Tarantino on your ass! Ha!)

To catch a poodle, part I'veFinallyHadIt.

Dear Max,
Love you baby, I really do.  I'm sorry that I yelled at you after Will tripped and fell forward, face-down the stairs this morning and you pounced on his back like a trampoline as you raced to beat him down.  I realize that probably put you a bit on edge.  But you need to learn that when the door doesn't slam all the way shut and bounces back open and a child is simultaneously pressing the garage door button is not an invitation for you to go cavorting around the neighborhood in rain-soaked yards and flowerbeds.  It is not a game, despite my best efforts to get your attention on your tennis ball in order to catch you. 

So here's the deal, babycakes.  Next time the UPS man stops by, you and I are going to have a little come-to-Jesus meeting out in the backyard.  You're a smart boy, it won't hurt much.

Live! From Kansas City! Its Saturday Night!

Met some of my favorite friends from inside the box tonight for drinks and enchiladas at Mannys downtown.  Like Dorothy and her friend ChaCha (who tells one helluva great? horrible? dating story), Cagey, Average Jane, Dawn, Criquette, and of course, Bossy!  Very fun evening.  However, in true Me fashion, I didn't do anything I said I was going to do in the emails.  I didn't even show up on time.  I didn't drink margaritas, having decided beer was probably a safer bet.  And I didn't bring my camera, for to take lots of pictures of Cagey wearing her sombrero.  But I didn't forget it, either.  Alas, the camera was a casualty to the cute,  but too small purse. It was a choice.  And, the Treo camera? No flash, remember?  Worthless.

Hopefully one of the others got some decent shots. 
And!  Its supposed to be nice tomorrow!  Help me hope for Will to actually play a soccer game. Stay tuned.

Friday wine goodness: Party like the Pope.

I would just like to quickly point out, that for all the media coverage given to Dubya's little pontiff party which annoys me greatly, it is kind of cool to have the Pope here on US soil.  I wish we had someone to thrust at him besides The Idiot, but that's a different post.

By the way, if you search google news for the word "wine" by most recent articles, number 3 happens to be the event calendar of the Kansas City Catholic Diocese, the main reason being this event:

"Forks and Corks" Food and Wine Tasting, to benefit Harvesters, 6 to 9 pm April 24. 

This cracks me up to no small degree.  Catholics ain't afraid of the drink, that's for sure.  And it reminds me of something else, from the "way back when" files.

In 1996 my husband and I lived in Pittsburgh, PA.  Nice town, The Burgh, if you happen to A. be from there, B. be Catholic, or C. like the Steelers.  We moved there not claiming any of those things, so it was a rough year.
But one of my favorite restaurants of all time is in Pittsburgh, The Church Brewery.  It was an old church with stained glass windows and beautiful hard wood pews and carved decor, and it was scheduled for demolition before a couple of guys bought it and converted it into a restaurant, and put the beer vats up in the alter alcove, the holiest place in the building.  It had just opened that year, so it got a lot of notoriety, both good and bad.  The good - because it was such a neat place, had good food and great micro-brew.  The bad?  Well, some people didn't appreciate the holiness of the beer vats.

But we loved going there, it was close by to the advertising agency where I worked, and my friends and I went there when our just-out-of-school entry-level paychecks would allow.  And the best quote I ever heard was from my friend Paul, a nice Irish Catholic boy from up the Mainline in Philadelphia, when asked by an older woman in our office who was appalled, if it offended his religion. 

"Are you kidding?  This is the best thing in the world for us Irish Catholics!  We can drink and go to church at the same time!  It doesn't get any better!"

The terrible, horrible, very bad, no good day.

Or, Why Monday's are Not for Sissies.

Dang y'all, yesterday was a bizarre series of comically bad disasters not seen since the California days of this blog.  Although there was no puking, but I probably just jinxed myself even mentioning it.

The day started out Okay, aside from the 26 degree overnight temperatures which required the sheeting of my trees and flowerbeds.  The in-laws, here for a quick weekend visit, got up and started their 12-hour drive at 5am without waking anyone, including the dog.  We got the boys up and on the bus without any major mishaps, work went fine, diet was going good, everything seemed fine, until about 3:30 in the afternoon.
As I got ready to leave work for the day, my husband and I discovered we each had plans for the evening and thought the other would be home.  Oops.  So I started trying to find a babysitter.  No luck, but I did wrangle a friend into taking them for an evening playdate at her house, thankfully.

When I got home, I started putting together what I would need to make a homemade pasta dinner for my kids.  See, sometimes I do this weird thing where when I'm really busy and stressed I decide to take on something outside of my range, in a short timespan, with bad odds.  Bizarre, I know.

Anyway, I got some frozen chicken boiling (with the plan being to shred it into the casserole anyway) and started some water to boil for the pasta.  Then I went off to the computer and got caught up in, er, um, twitter.
Twenty minutes later, the chicken was boiling nicely and the other pan of water was waaaay ready to throw in the pasta, so I opened the box and started to pour it in.  This is when I noticed something looked a little weird about that box of pasta.

Oh, yes. It happened again.  Oh no, I am not even kidding.  You probably can't see the nasty little fuckers crawling around in the picture, but trust me, they're in there.
I spent the next ten minutes throwing out and inspecting all other dry goods.  I rediscovered I have a plastic jar to hold pasta so as to prevent this from happening, since I learned my lesson so well from the last time we had bugs in the pantry.

Oh right.  You have to put the pasta in the jar with the airtight seal.  Right.

So, anyway, Plan B, as I don't have other dry pasta and don't really want to cook any now anyway, and now I'm running behind schedule, we move to the frozen section, and throw a concoction into the skillet that I had bought for the grownups, knowing it was chock full of things my kids don't eat.  But too bad, its what's for dinner.
Did they eat it?
No. No they did not.  They drank a lot of milk though, so go with it.

Next, I dropped them off at my friend's house, went to my uneventful meeting, and returned home.  I pulled the car into the garage, turned off the ignition and set the keys in the cupholder, where they always go, as I leave my keys in the car while parked in the garage.
Maybe you see where this is going.
When I got out of the car I realized I had not pulled in far enough for the garage door to go down, so I turned around and went to open the door and hop back in.  As I pulled on the door handle I heard this weird little snapping noise, kind of like when the doors lock.
Exactly like when the doors lock.
Doors Locked. Keys mocking me from the cupholder.  Garage door can't go down.
No problem!  Have spare set!  In the house!
No. In the glovebox. In the car. Long story.

So I went inside and poured myself a glass of wine.   And then I called American Express, and God love 'em, they had a lockout guy at my house in under an hour, and no charge to me, since we have a roadside assistance plan as part of our card membership.  And he got into my car, handed me my keys, and left like a prince in a chariot.

And then I went to bed, waiting for Tuesday, and dreamed that Margaret Cho was my BFF and a porn star to boot, and I was trying to help her get out of the business.  Go figure that one out.

 

This is what it's come to.

Bring it, Jack (ass) Frost. I got your mid April freeze right here.
(That's my weeping cherry tree under the sheet, and my poor roses under the buckets.)